


When Will These Nightmares End?

by wonderingwoman



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-13 16:34:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18035198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wonderingwoman/pseuds/wonderingwoman
Summary: Simon and Baz keep Penny up with their nightmares.   Post canon.





	When Will These Nightmares End?

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first Carry On story. I hope you like it!

Penny

Penny awoke to the sound of crying. Again. She was used to it. She waited to hear the soft whispers and the quiet sounds of comfort. She waited to hear if was going to be a night where the fears were quickly allayed and everyone was able to return to sleep without much trouble, or if it was going to be one of those nights where the crying didn’t subside. Where one of her roommates had fallen too far into the abyss, too deep down into the nightmare that was more memory than dream. 

Both of her roommates were tormented by their memories, their nightmares, their nights filled with terror. Some nights, when the cries didn’t subside and the soft whispered words weren’t enough, Penny would get up and she would make tea. She would carry the pot into their bedroom and pour a cup for each of them. If it was Simon who was awake from his dreams, he would take the tea from her and just hold the cup for a long time. Quiet, he would sit up in bed and move over when she came into the room. She knew he felt both guilty for waking her and grateful for her comfort. She and Baz would sit, one on each side of him, all three silently sipping their tea, arms and legs tangled together. Penny would wrap her arm through Simon’s and rest her head on his shoulder, not saying anything, just breathing with him. Baz would also wrap one of his long arms around Simon, resting it on Penny’s shoulder. On an easy night, he would rest his head on Simon too, whispering his soft words of comfort until Simon’s breathing calmed, his tears stopped falling, and he quietly drifted back to sleep. Penny would take the cold cups of tea from both Simon and Baz and settle in for the rest of the night. Then she and Baz would sleep, fitfully taking turns, whispering to Simon, smoothing the hair out of his face if he would begin to startle. He would raise his arms, stretched out to whatever or whomever he was fighting, chasing, reaching for in his sleep. She and Baz held him tight within their own arms. Sometimes they would hold hands themselves, watching each other in the dark, their eyes filled with concern for the boy they both loved. In the morning, when Simon would wake, he could never remember the fitful sleeping or the nightmare. He would just open his eyes and see Penny and Baz holding hands over his chest, Baz’s arm wrapped tightly around his back, holding the three of them tightly together. He could see the concern in their faces as they slept deeply in the early morning. He could tell by their heavy breathing and deep sleep that they would have been up watching him all night. 

On the nights when the nightmares held on too tightly to wake from and Simon would be thrashing around and calling out, for the Mage, for Penny, or Baz, living in the partial memory, partial nightmare of not being able to save one of them, Baz would have to sit up, facing Simon, holding his face in his hands. “Simon,” he would repeat, in a soft magical mantra, “we’re all here, we’re all okay,” Baz would say, making the words magic, while he would calm him with his cool vampire hands as Simon burned up, fighting in his sleep. Penny would just sit, holding Simon’s hands until Baz’s magic, and words, and closeness finally calmed him. These nights it would be Simon who held on tightly to them, afraid that one of the two people he had, who loved him, would disappear while he was sleeping.

Some nights Penny would wake up and it would be Baz who was crying out in his sleep, reliving his mother’s death and suicide, in an infinite loop of grief and shame. Baz always remembered his dreams. He retold them with crystal clarity: in some dreams he was a baby and his mother took him with her when she set herself and the vampire biting her up in flames. In the morning he could still feel the fire burning him as he cried for his mother. In other dreams, he was a grown man, arriving a moment too late to save her. He would beg her not to leave him, calling out for her, fumbling for his wand or dropping it as she set herself and the vampire on fire. And then, in the worst of his dreams, the dreams he could not be calmed from, his mother came across the veil, looking for him, not to ask him to avenge her death but to set him on fire because he had become a vampire. In those dreams, Baz would have to beg his mother not to kill him. She would shoot her blue fire at him over and over sometimes burning him up, sometimes missing him and burning up Simon right in front of his eyes.

Again, Penny would make tea and get in bed with them. Baz was more difficult to calm, reverting to his old self, filled with anger and rage. Penny would have to use her magic to calm him, singing him nursery rhymes while Simon tried to keep him from hurting himself. Or one of them. Simon had to struggle to hold Baz down because he was stronger than the both of them. When Baz would finally calm, again they would all lie together in the bed, this time with Baz in the middle, Simon and Penny lying close and holding his hands, but not holding him too tight. Baz rejected the tight, close comfort that Simon craved.

In the morning Baz would wake up and see Penny and Simon sleeping on both sides of him and remember the long dark night. He would sit up quickly, and trying not to wake them, slip out of bed, covering them as he snuck out, filled slightly with the shame of needing them but also the warmth of their comfort, which he’d never had when he was young. After his mother had died he would sleep in his gigantic bed, covered with gargoyles, and cry for her. Sometimes he must have cried out too loud in his sleep and his father would come in and pat him on the head, telling him to be brave and make his mother proud or Fiona would come and sit on a chair in his room, drinking her wine, until he fell back asleep. Most nights though, he would just cry himself back to sleep, alone in his giant bed, in his giant room, in his giant lonely house. 

Baz would never admit it, but he really liked waking up in Penny and Simon’s arms. There was a deep warmth he felt, that made him feel more like a person, more human, when he was wrapped between them. 

In the morning Baz always would act like nothing had happened, but he would quietly slip out of bed to make them breakfast, all of their favorite dishes. He had finally perfected the sour cherry scones he knew Simon loved, prying the recipe from Cook Pritchard. Penny always said she just liked cereal but was secretly happy when Baz made his hot breakfasts. When Simon or Penny would wake up, he would hand them a cup of hot tea, briefly allowing a moment of gratitude to slip into his eyes before he smoothed his face, wearing his carefully constructed persona, extra distant from them for the rest of the day, disappointed in himself for needing them.

Sometimes Penny wondered how she ended up with this as her life. Baz wasn’t even technically her roommate. He had his own entire posh apartment from his Aunt Fiona where he rarely (never) stayed. Penny thought it was fancy, with all of his Aunt’s gilded curtains and antique china, but Baz never wanted to stay there. He preferred their small walk-up with all of her parent’s hand-me-down furniture. 

Most nights they all stayed home, having had enough adventure to last them a lifetime. They would do their classwork or talk late into the night. Penny and Baz never ran out of things to argue about. They could discuss the finer points of elocution for hours or Baz’s Tory economic philosophies, which Penny did not agree with. Simon would lie with his head on Baz’s lap, stretched out on the couch, his feet hanging over the edge. He had a lifetime of physical comfort he was trying to catch up on. Baz would hold onto one of Simon’s hands or rest one of his own on Simon’s head, absently playing with his bronze curls, which had grown longer over the last few months. Every so often Simon would interject a comment, but mostly he seemed content to just listen while they spoke, as long as he was holding onto Baz. 

Soon Penny was going to spend a year in America, with Micah. She was taking a trip with her father, where he was going to speak about the slowly recovering, magical dead spots. She was excited to travel, to speak as an expert with her father, and then spend a school year at university with Micah. It was possible she might like it there and not move back. Or not.

She knew she would miss this. She knew that Baz and Simon needed her now in a way that Micah or her family didn’t. She could never explain their relationship to anyone, how many nights she spent in bed with Baz and Simon, holding one of them, both of them, as they worked through their torment during the long nights. Plus, they loved her and cared for her too, Simon always making her tea and Baz cooking her favorite foods. He had become an excellent cook, quite surprising for someone who a year ago couldn’t eat in front of anyone. He would come home from his classes at the London School of Economics and make dinner for them before he began his classwork, while Penny and Simon cleaned up. Of course it was never to his satisfaction. Most nights, while everyone was getting ready for bed, he had to clean as a whistle, everything they had missed. Baz said Simon and Penelope were hopeless in the kitchen, and would probably end up giving them all food poisoning. He was just preserving his own life he would say when they tried to thank him, brushing off their gratitude and compliments with a sneer. She could see him smiling though, when he thought they weren’t looking. She would never have expected Baz to be the one who cared for them with such attention. He loved to feed them and loved to watch Simon eat, which Penny pretended not to notice. She knew this was the real reason Baz had learned to love to cook. It was that Simon loved to eat and Baz wanted to makeup for a lifetime of Simon not having enough. He was trying to makeup for Simon’s every missed meal.

Penny would miss them when she left, and she was relieved the nightmares were coming fewer and further between. Personally, Penny thought the dreams were just part of their healing process, equal to Simon’s own fancy therapy. 

Tonight though, she heard the crying and the soft words and then the quiet. They had settled themselves back to sleep easy. She remembered her own nightmares and she knew, they would be able to carry on without her.


End file.
